CAPAS A Service for Improving the Assignments of

Common Agriculture Policy Funds to Farmers and Land Owners

1Mariano Navarro, 1Ramón Baiget, 1Jesús Estrada, and 2Dumitru Roman1TRAGSA Group, Spain and 2SINTEF, Norway

dumitru.roman@sintef.no

@RuleML 2015

TRAGSA Grouphttp://www.tragsa.es

• A Spanish public sector administration company

• ~ 4000 people (Tragsatec)

• Provision of agricultural, forestry, livestock, and rural development services, to the conservation and protection of the environment

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For the last 50 years the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been the European Union's (EU) most important common policy. This explains why traditionally it has taken a large part of the EU's budget […]REGULATION (EU) No 1306/2013 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 17 December 2013

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• Stakeholders:• Public administration (e.g. FEGA in

Spain)• Farmers and land owners• Intermediaries (e.g. service providers)

• Problems:• Unfair grant assignment and

expenditure on audits• Incorrect grant assignments

• Farmers could loose close to 30% of funding

CAP funds assignments

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CAPAS funds assignment service

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Technological Challenges

• Datasets:

• Volume

• Heterogeneity

• Different sectors and sources

• Technical process:

• Dynamic

• Integration

05.08.2015 proDataMarket 6

Free Maps Layers

WMS, WFS - Inspire

Lidar

Integration of

data from different

sources and scales

Dynamic process

Agricultural parcels

+

Cadastre / Land

registry

Land Cover – Land Use

INSPIRE – EU 2020

Example technical challenges: working with LIDAR data

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• LIDAR Dataset• Points cloud• Relief• Elevation profile• Vegetation and crops type

LiDAR

CLASSES

Vegetation

Soil

Variables to be used in funds assignment rules

• Soil characterization

• Vegetation cover

• Crop diversification

• Type, density and surface of Ecological Focus Areas

• Proximity or overlapping to:• Sites of Community Interest (SICs)

• Natural Parks and Protected Sites

• Special Bird Protection Area

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New CAP funds assignment rules

• Crop Diversification: e.g. “A farmer must cultivate at least 2 crops when his arable land exceeds 10 hectares and at least 3 crops when his arable land exceeds 30 hectares. The main crop may cover at most 75% of arable land, and the two main crops at most 95% of the arable area.”

• Kind, density and surface of Ecological Focus Areas: e.g., Maintaining an “ecological focus area” of at least 5% of the arable area of the holding for farms with an area larger than 15 hectares (excluding permanent grassland) – i.e. field margins, hedges, trees, fallow land, landscape features, biotopes, buffer strips, afforested area. This figure will rise to 7% after a Commission report in 2017 and a legislative proposal.

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New CAP funds assignment rules (cont’)

• Ecological focus areas (EFA) on farms (determined by each member country within the categories established by the EU)• Are there EFAs in a specific parcel? How large are they? What is the surface ratio

between arable lands and EFAs surfaces?

• Conditionality - Obligations related to:• Public Health: Use of authorized pesticides, Avoiding pollution, Appropriate products

storing…• Environment: Avoiding groundwater pollution, Preservation of wild animals and

birds, Avoiding plastics pollution, Sewage sludge (they can be used only during a specific period before grazing)…

• Satisfactory Conditions-Good practices: Avoiding erosion, Avoiding water wasting, Avoiding spontaneous vegetation invasion…

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Some characteristics of the rules

• Complexity• Direct translation from legal and administrative language

• Correct interpretation of the rules

• Potentially large number of rules

• Specification• Indirectly, by European Commission or National Administrations

(Transposition), and refined by other stakeholders

• Frequency of change• Not less than a year; typically 4-5 years

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Preliminary result: CAPAS service

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Currently integrated data: • Permanent pasture• Landscape elements• Crop protection products and

pollution produced by them

http://sigpac.mapa.es/fega/visor/

Importance

• Exploitation of cross-sectorial data sources

• Publication and use of currently collected but unused datasets in the distribution of funds algorithm

• New data processing algorithms over LIDAR Big Data

• Cadastre and ownership information enriched with biodiversity information

• Implementation of European 2020 CAP funds assignment rules

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Impacts and outcomes

• Sharing of TRAGSA internal property datasets in novel ways

• Exploitation of cadastral data and other cross-sectorial data

• Sharing the GIS descriptive data obtained from LIDAR in novel ways

• Internationalization process

• Fairer funds assignment

• Public costs saving

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Thank you!Contact: dumitru.roman@sintef.no; jmev@tragsa.es

http://prodatamarket.eu

http://www.smartopendata.eu

http://www.tragsa.es

@prodatamarket

@smartopendata